Telegraph reports that David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, obtained political backing at a meeting of the Cabinet’s domestic affairs committee and a statement has been pencilled in for next Thursday, the last day of the current Commons session.
Whitehall officials said final details had still to be agreed but no meeting of the full Cabinet is considered necessary to endorse what will be one of the most controversial decisions of Labour’s six years in power.
The ID card will be required by everyone over 16 – more than 40 million people – and cost around £40, though with concessions for the elderly and the poor. Each card will contain biometric data, such as an image of a person’s iris or fingerprint, so police and other authorities can confirm the holder’s identity.
So this is it then? Tagged, finger-printed, iris-scanned, data about us stored on a ‘central database’, at the mercy of government bureaucrats.
I suppose the only thing left is the way of the late Mr Willcock who was the last person prosecuted in Britain for refusing to produce his wartime ID card and he spearheaded a public campaign that led to their abolition 50 years ago.
ID cards were introduced in 1939 but remained in use after the war to help in the administration of food rationing. The police had powers to see ID cards in certain circumstances. If an individual did not have one when asked, it had to be produced at a police station within two days.
This was where the law stood when Mr Willcock, 54, was stopped by Pc Harold Muckle as he drove in Finchley, north London, on Dec 7, 1950. The constable asked him to produce his national registration card. Mr Willcock refused.
Mr Willcock was charged under the provisions of the National Registration Act 1939. He argued that the emergency legislation was now redundant because the emergency was clearly at an end. The magistrates convicted Mr Willcock, as they were obliged to, but gave him an absolute discharge. He decided to test the law in the higher courts. Each found against him on the grounds that the statute remained in force and could only be reversed by an Order in Council.
In 1951, the Tories won the general election, and abolished ID cards the following year. Mr Willcock lived just long enough to see them go. He dropped dead in the National Liberal Club in December 1952 while debating the case against socialism.
I am not sure this would work nowadays, after many years of Labour rampaging through the justice system. However, it may be worth a try…
I don’t know. There is something very British about this story. Britain has produced lots of splendid chaps like Mr Willcock over the years, and continues to do so. (I particularly like the fact that he died in the middle of a debate agaist socialism). Things may be bad, but I think the fight is a long way from lost. We need to get all the papers writing the kinds of things that are in this article in the Telegraph that Andy linked to. And, much as we hate them, we have to try to get the BBC on side. If they are going to fight a war with the government, we have to try to shift the subject of that war so that it is over things that matter to us, like ID cards. There are undoubtedly some people in the BBC who care about civil liberties, and we have to find them.
The other moral of that story is that it took a change of government to finally get rid of wartime ID cards. We need to make it very clear that this is an issue that will change our votes. That is, if the Conservatives commit to halt the introduction of ID cards if they are elected, then we will vote for them. (It would be enough to make me vote for them, and I wouldn’t normally).
Don’t get depressed. We can win this fight.
I agree with your comments about making ID cards a sort of election issue, Michael, but unfortunately the Conservatives have already stated that they think ID cards would be a good idea because they believe that they could help improve the NHS by ensuring that only people “entitled to” NHS treatment receive it.
Is there any chance that the Conservatives might be persuaded to revise this policy and begin to appreciate that the general public are not in favour of ID cards… even if these ID cards could, somehow, miraculously, solve all of the NHS’s funding problems – which we all know relate to the messy bureaucratic system, not use of the NHS’s services by immigrants who haven’t “paid in”? Or have the Conservatives almost completely abandoned their defence of civil liberties, which was displayed in the 1950s?
The election is about two and a half years off. That is likely before the cards will actually be issued, so they are likely still reversible at that point. If it can be made clear that there is major public opposition to the cards and there are a substantial number of people will change their votes on that particular issue, then the Tories can be made to change their position. I am not saying it is easy – quite the opposite – but it can be done. (The 40 pound charge is a gift to the opposition to the cards, for one thing. We need to start saying “poll tax” over and over again).
That the Conservative Party can’t crucify Blunkett for this is just a staggering indictment of how low the Tories have fallen.
A democracy needs a healthy opposition party, as we are finding out in Australia.- here it’s the Labour Party that is in disarray, and the same effect is happening; the governing party is taking huge liberties with our liberties.